i 


S63p 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


PRINTING  AND  THE 
RENAISSANCE 


^PRINTING  AND  THE  RENAIS- 
SANCE :  A  PAPER  READ  BEFORE 
THE  FORTNIGHTLY  CLUB  OF 
ROCHESTER  NEW  YORK  BY 
JOHN   ROTHWELL   SLATER. 


NEW  YORK 

William  Edwin  Rudge 
192  I 


PRINTING  AND  THE  RENAISSANCE: 
A  PAPER  READ  BEFORE  THE  " 

FORTNIGHTLY  CLUB  OF  A?y 

ROCHESTER  S  ^3  jp 

N.Y. 

PRINTING  did  not  make  the  Renaissance;  the 
Renaissance  made  printing.  Printing  did  not  be- 
gin the  publication  and  dissemination  of  books. 
There  were  Hbraries  of  vast  extent  in  ancient 
Babylon,  Egypt,  Greece,  Rome.  There  were  universities 
centuries  before  Gutenberg  where  the  few  instructed  the 
many  in  the  learning  treasured  up  in  books,  and  where 
both  scholars  and  professional  scribes  multiplied  copies 
of  books  both  old  and  new.  At  the  outset  of  any  exam- 
ination of  the  influence  of  printing  on  the  Renaissance  it 
is  necessary  to  remind  ourselves  that  the  intellectual  life 
of  the  ancient  and  the  mediaeval  world  was  built  upon 
the  written  word.  There  is  a  naive  view  in  which  ancient 
literature  is  conceived  as  existing  chiefly  in  the  autograph 
manuscripts  and  original  documents  of  a  few  great  cen- 
ters to  which  all  ambitious  students  must  have  resort.  A 
very  little  inquiry  into  the  multiplication  of  books  before 
printing  shows  us  how  erroneous  is  this  view. 

We  must  pass  over  entirely  the  history  of  publishing 
and  book-selling  in  ancient  times,  a  subject  too  vast  for 
adequate  summary  in  a  preliminary  survey  of  this  sort. 
With  the  fall  of  Rome  and  the  wholesale  destruction 
that  accompanied  the  barbarian  invasions  a  new  chapter 
begins  in  the  history  of  the  dissemination.of  Jiterature. 


1178"?  in 


This  chapter  opens  with  the  founding  of  the  scripto- 
rium, or  monastic  copying  system,  by  Cassiodorus  and 
Saint  Benedict  early  in  the  sixth  century.  To  these  two 
men,  Cassiodorus,  the  ex-chancellor  of  the  Gothic  king 
f  Theodoric,  and  Benedict,  the  founder  of  the  Benedictine 
I  order,  is  due  the  gratitude  of  the  modern  world.    It 
..J  was  through  their  foresight  in  setting  the  monks  at 
«.  work  copying  the  scriptures  and  the  secular  literature 
^  of  antiquity  that  we  owe  the  preservation  of  most  of  the 
books  that  have  survived  the  ruins  of  the  ancient  world. 
\  At  the  monastery  of  Monte  Cassino,  founded  by  Saint 
I  Benedict  in  the  year  529,  and  at  that  of  Viviers,  founded 
\  by  Cassiodorus  in  531,  the  Benedictine  rule  required  of 
>;  every  monk  that  a  fixed  portion  of  each  day  be  spent  in 
•*v  the  scriptorium.  There  the  more  skilled  scribes  were  en- 
trusted with  the  copying  of  precious  documents  rescued 
from  the  chaos  of  the  preceding  century,  while  monks 
not  yet  sufficiently  expert  for  this  high  duty  were  in- 
structed by  their  superiors. 

The  example  thus  nobly  set  was  imitated  throughout 
all  the  centuries  that  followed,  not  only  in  the  Benedic- 
tine monasteries  of  Italy,  France,  Germany,  England, 
Scotland,  Ireland,  Iceland,  but  in  religious  houses  of  all 
orders.  It  is  to  the  mediaeval  Church,  her  conservatism 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  her  industry,  her  patience, 
her  disinterested  guardianship  alike  of  sacred  and  of 
pagan  letters,  that  the  world  owes  most  of  our  knowledge 
of  antiquity.  Conceive  how  great  would  be  our  loss  if  to 
archaeology  alone  we  could  turn  for  the  reconstruction 
of  the  civilization,  the  art,  the  philosophy,  the  public 
and  private  life  of  Greece  and  Rome.  If  the  Church  had 
done  no  more  than  this  for  civilization,  it  would  still 


have  earned  some  measure  of  tolerance  from  its  most 
anti-clerical  opponents.  It  is  of  course  to  the  Eastern 
rather  than  to  the  Roman  Church  that  we  owe  the  pres- 
ervation of  classical  Greek  literature,  copied  during  the 
dark  ages  in  Greek  monasteries  and  introduced  into 
Italy  after  the  fall  of  Constantinople. 

A  second  stage  in  the  multiplication  and  publication 
of  manuscript  books  begins  with  the  founding  of  the 
great  mediaeval  universities  of  Bologna,  Paris,  Padua, 
Oxford,  and  other  centers  of  higher  education.  Inas- 
much as  the  study  of  those  days  was  almost  entirely 
book  study,  the  maintenance  of  a  university  library 
with  one  or  two  copies  of  each  book  studied  was  inade- 
quate. There  grew  up  in  each  university  city  an  organ- 
ized system  of  supplying  the  students  with  textbooks. 
The  authorized  book-dealers  of  a  mediaeval  university 
were  called  stationarii,  or  stationers,  a  term  apparently 
derived  from  the  fixed  post  or  station  assigned  in  or  near 
the  university  buildings  to  each  scribe  permitted  to 
supply  books  to  the  students  and  professors.  A  stationer 
in  England  has  always  meant  primarily  a  book-dealer 
or  publisher,  as  for  example  in  the  term  Stationers'  Hall, 
the  guild  or  corporation  which  until  1842  still  exercised 
in  London  the  functions  of  a  copyright  bureau.  Inci- 
dentally a  stationer  also  dealt  in  writing  materials, 
whence  our  ordinary  American  use  of  the  term.  Another 
name  for  the  university  book-dealers  was  the  classical 
Latin  word  librarii,  which  usually  in  mediaeval  Latin 
meant  not  what  we  call  a  librarian  but  a  vender  of 
books,  like  the  French  Ubraire.  These  scribes  were  not 
allowed  at  first  to  sell  their  manuscripts,  but  rented 
them  to  the  students  at  rates  fixed  by  university  statutes. 

3 


A  folded  sheet  of  eight  pages,  sixteen  columns  of  sixty- 
two  lines  each,  was  the  unit  on  which  the  rental  charges 
were  based.  Such  a  sheet  at  the  beginning  of  the  thir-. 
teenth  century  rented  for  about  twenty  cents  a  term; 
and  since  an  ordinary  textbook  of  philosophy  or  theol- 
ogy or  canon  law  contained  many  sheets,  these  charges 
constituted  no  inconsiderable  part  of  the  cost  of  instruc- 
tion. The  books  must  be  returned  before  the  student  left 
the  university;  sales  were  at  first  surreptitious  and  ille- 
gal, but  became  common  early  in  the  fourteenth  century. 
Reasonable  accuracy  among  the  stationers  was  secured 
by  a  system  of  fines  for  errors,  half  of  which  went  to  the 
university,  the  other  half  being  divided  between  the 
supervisor  or  head  proof-reader  and  the  informant  who 
discovered  the  error. 

The  original  regulation  which  forbade  the  stationers 
to  sell  books  was  intended  to  prevent  students  of  a 
profiteering  turn  of  mind  from  buying  books  for  resale 
to  their  fellow-students  at  a  higher  price,  thus  cornering 
the  market  and  holding  up  the  work  of  an  entire  class. 
In  course  of  time,  however,  the  book-dealers  were  per- 
mitted not  only  to  sell  textbooks,  at  prices  still  controlled 
by  official  action,  but  also  to  buy  and  sell  manuscripts 
of  other  books,  both  those  produced  by  local  scribes 
and  those  imported  from  other  cities  and  countries. 

This  broadening  of  the  activities  of  the  university 
bookstores  led  naturally  to  the  third  and  last  stage 
which  the  publishing  business  underwent  before  the 
invention  of  printing.  This  stage  was  the  establishment 
in  Florence,  Paris,  and  other  intellectual  centers,  of 
bookshops  selling  manuscripts  to  the  general  public 
rather  than  to  university  students.    These  grew  rapidly 

4 


jiuring  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century,  receiving  a 
marked  impetus  from  the  new  interest  in  Greek  studies. 
Some  years  before  the  fall  of  Constantinople  in  1453 
Italian  book-sellers  were  accustomed  to  send  their  buyers 
to  the  centers  of  Byzantine  learning  in  the  near  East  in 
quest  of  manuscripts  to  be  disposed  of  at  fancy  prices 
to  the  rich  collectors  and  patrons  of  literature.  There  is 
evidence  of  similar  methods  in  France  and  Germany 
during  the  earlier  decades  of  the  Renaissance. 

This  preliminary  sketch  of  the  book-publishing  busi- 
ness before  printing  is  intended  to  correct  a  rather 
common  misapprehension.  Manuscript  books  were  in- 
deed relatively  costly,  but  they  were  not  scarce.  Any 
scholar  who  had  not  been  through  a  university  not  only 
had  access  to  public  libraries  of  hundreds  of  volumes, 
Jbut  might  also  possess,  at  prices  not  beyond  the  reach 
,of  a  moderate  purse,  his  own  five-foot  shelf  of  the  clas- 
sics. The  more  elegant  manuscripts,  written  by  experts 
and  adorned  with  rich  illuminations  and  sumptuous 
bindings,  were  of  course  not  for  the  humble  student; 
but  working  copies,  multiplied  on  a  large  scale  by  a 
roomful  of  scribes  writing  simultaneously  from  dicta- 
tion, might  always  be  had.  Chaucer,  writing  of  the  poor 
clerk  of  Oxford  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
tells  us  that 

"Him  was  levere  have  at  his  beddes  heed  ^^ 

Twenty  bokes,  clad  in  blak  or  reed,  / 

Of  Aristotle  and  his  philosophye, 
Than  robes  riche,  or  fithele,  or  gay  sautrye." 

We  are  not  sure  that  he  had  the  whole  twenty  books; 
that  was  his  ambition,  his  academic  dream  of  wealth; 

5 


but  we  are  assured  that  he  spent  on  books  all  the  money 
he  could  borrow  from  his  friends,  and  that  he  showed  his 
gratitude  by  busily  praying  for  the  souls  of  his  creditors. 

When  we  consider  the  enormous  number  of  manu- 
script books  that  must  have  existed  in  Europe  in  the 
middle  ages,  we  may  well  wonder  why  they  have  become 
relatively  rare  in  modern  times.  Several  explanations 
account  for  this.  In  the  first  place,  the  practice  of 
erasing  old  manuscripts  and  using  the  same  vellum 
again  for  other  works  was  extremely  common.  Secondly, 
vast  numbers  of  manuscripts  in  the  monasteries  and 
other  libraries  of  Europe  were  wantonly  or  accidentally 
destroyed  by  fire,  especially  in  times  of  war  and  reli- 
gious fanaticism.  In  the  third  place,  the  early  binders, 
down  through  the  sixteenth  century  and  even  later, 
used  sheets  of  vellum  from  old  manuscripts  for  the 
linings  and  the  covers  of  printed  books.  Finally,  after 
the  invention  of  printing,  as  soon  as  a  given  work  had 
been  adequately  and  handsomely  printed  in  a  standard 
edition,  all  but  the  finest  manuscripts  of  that  book 
would  naturally  be  looked  upon  as  of  little  value,  and 
would  be  subject  to  loss  and  decay  if  not  to  deliberate 
destruction.  Owing  to  these  and  perhaps  other  causes 
it  is  almost  entirely  the  religious  manuscripts  that  have 
survived,  except  those  preserved  in  royal  libraries  and 
museums  from  the  finer  collections  of  the  middle  ages. 

The  invention  of  printing  was  not  the  work  of  any  one 
man.  Not  only  were  printed  pages  of  text  with  accom- 
panying pictures  produced  from  woodcut  blocks  in  Hol- 
land a  quarter  of  a  century  before  Gutenberg  began  his 
work  at  Mainz,  but  it  is  pretty  well  established  that 
movable  types  were  employed  by  Laurence  Koster,  of 
6 


Haarlem,  as  early  as  1430.  But  Koster,  who  died  about 
1440,  did  not  carry  his  invention  beyond  the  experimen- 
tal stages,  and  produced  no  really  fine  printing.  More- 
over, his  work  had  no  immediate  successor  in  Holland. 
Whether  it  be  true,  as  sometimes  alleged,  that  Guten- 
berg first  learned  of  the  new  art  from  one  of  Koster's 
workmen,  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  At  any  rate, 
Gutenberg's  contemporaries  as  well  as  his  successors 
gave  to  him  the  credit  of  the  invention.  That  he  was 
not  the  first  to  conceive  the  idea  of  multiplying  impres- 
sions of  type-forms  by  the  use  of  a  screw  press  is  evident; 
but  he  was  the  first  to  develop  the  invention  to  a  point 
where  it  became  capable  of  indefinite  extension.  He 
seems  to  have  worked  in  secret  for  some  years  on  the 
problems  involved  in  type-founding  and  printing  before 
the  year  1450,  when  he  set  up  his  shop  in  Mainz. 

The  capital  for  the  new  business  was  furnished  by  a 
wealthy  goldsmith  named  Johann  Fust.  Between  1450 
and  1455  Gutenberg  printed  an  edition  of  the  Latin 
Bible,  sometimes  known  as  the  Mazarin  Bible,  which  is 
ordinarily  regarded  as  the  first  printed  book.  It  was  a 
magnificently  printed  volume,  exhibiting  at  the  very 
foundation  of  the  art  a  skill  in  presswork  scarcely  sur- 
passed by  any  of  Gutenberg's  immediate  successors. 
He  was  a  great  printer,  but  not  a  financially  successful 
one.  Fust  sued  his  partner  in  1455  for  repayment  of 
the  loans  advanced,  and  upon  Gutenberg's  failure  to 
meet  these  obligations  Fust  foreclosed  the  mortgage 
and  took  over  the  printing  plant.  Although  Gutenberg 
started  another  publishing  house  at  Mainz,  and  contin- 
ued it  until  his  death  in  1468,  the  main  development  of 
printing  after  1455  was  in  the  original  plant  as  carried 

7 


on  by  Fust  and  his  son-in-law,  Peter  Schoeffer.  They 
printed  in  1457  an  edition  of  the  Psalms  in  which  for  the 
first  time  two-color  printing  was  employed,  the  large 
initial  letters  being  printed  in  red  and  black.  This  inno- 
vation, designed  to  imitate  the  rubricated  initials  of  the 
manuscripts,  involved  great  technical  difficulties  in  the 
presswork,  and  was  not  generally  adopted.  Most  of  the 
early  printed  books,  even  down  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  left  blanks  for  the  large  capitals  at  the  begin- 
nings of  the  chapters,  to  be  filled  in  by  hand  by  profes- 
sional illuminators. 

From  the  establishments  of  Gutenberg  and  of  Fust 
and  Schoeffer  in  Mainz  knowledge  of  the  new  art  spread 
rapidly  into  many  German  cities.  In  1462  Mainz  was 
captured  and  sacked  by  Adolph  of  Nassau  in  one  of  the 
local  wars  of  the  period,  and  printers  from  the  Mainz 
shops  made  their  way  to  other  cities  throughout  the 
empire.  Before  1470  there  were  printing  establishments 
in  almost  every  German  city,  and  hundreds  of  works, 
mostly  theological,  had  been  issued  from  their  presses. 

In  all  these  early  German  books,  printed  of  course  in 
Latin,  the  type  used  was  the  black-letter.  Gutenberg, 
in  designing  his  first  font,  evidently  tried  to  imitate  as 
closely  as  possible  the  angular  gothic  alphabet  employed 
by  the  scribes  in  the  best  manuscripts.  Not  only  were 
the  letters  identical  in  form  with  the  engrossing  hand  of 
the  monks,  but  the  innumerable  abbreviated  forms  used 
in  the  Latin  manuscripts  were  retained.  Thus  a  stroke 
over  a  vowel  indicated  an  omitted  m  or  n,  a.  p  with  a 
stroke  across  it  indicated  the  Latin  prefix  per,  a  circle 
above  the  line  stood  for  the  termination  us,  an  r  with  a 
cross  meant  — ru?n,  and  so  forth.  These  abbreviations. 


which  make  printed  books  of  the  earliest  period  rather 
hard  reading  today,  were  retained  not  only  to  save  space 
but  to  give  the  printed  page  as  nearly  as  possible  the 
appearance  of  a  fine  manuscript.  It  was  not  at  first  the 
ambition  of  the  printers  and  type-founders  to  make  their 
books  more  legible  or  less  taxing  on  the  eyes  than  manu- 
script; their  readers  were  accustomed  to  manuscript  and 
felt  no  need  of  such  improvements.  The  mechanical 
advance  in  the  art  of  writing  brought  about  by  printing 
was  at  first  regarded  as  consisting  in  the  greater  rapidity 
and  lower  cost  at  which  printed  books  could  be  produced. 
But  the  new  invention  was  at  first  looked  upon  by 
some  famous  scholars  and  patrons  of  learning  as  a  detri- 
ment rather  than  a  help.  The  great  Trithemius,  abbot  of 
Sponheim,  wrote  as  late  as  1494  in  the  following  terms: 

"A  work  written  on  parchment  could  be  preserved  for  a  thou- 
sand years,  while  it  is  probable  that  no  volume  printed  on  paper 
will  last  for  more  than  two  centuries.  Many  important  works 
have  not  been  printed,  and  the  copies  of  these  must  be  prepared 
by  scribes.  The  scribe  who  ceases  his  work  because  of  the  inven- 
tion of  the  printing-press  can  be  no  true  lover  of  books,  in  that, 
regarding  only  the  present,  he  gives  no  due  thought  to  the  intel- 
lectual cultivation  of  his  successors.  The  printer  has  no  care  for 
the  beauty  and  the  artistic  form  of  books,  while  with  the  scribe 
this  is  a  labor  of  love." 

Contrasted  with  this  low  estimate  of  the  importance 
of  the  new  art  by  some  scholars,  we  note  the  promptness 
with  which  the  great  churchmen  of  Italy  and  of  France 
took  measures  to  import  German  printers  and  set  up 
presses  of  their  own.  In  1464  the  abbot  of  Subiaco,  a 
monastery  near  Rome,  brought  to  Italy  two  German 
printers,  Conrad  Schweinheim  and  Arnold  Pannartz, 
and  set  them  at  work  printing  liturgical  books  for  the 

9 


use  of  the  monks.  Soon  afterward,  under  ecclesiastical 
patronage,  they  began  to  issue,  first  at  Subiaco  and  then 
at  Rome,  a  series  of  Latin  classics.  During  five  years 
this  first  printing  establishment  in  Italy  published  the 
complete  works  of  Cicero,  Apuleius,  Caesar,  Virgil, 
Livy,  Strabo,  Lucan,  Pliny,  Suetonius,  Quintilian,  Ovid, 
as  well  as  of  such  fathers  of  the  Latin  Church  as  Augus- 
tine, Jerome  and  Cyprian,  and  a  complete  Latin  Bible. 
This  printing  establishment  came  to  an  end  in^i472  for 
lack  of  adequate  capital,  but  was  soon  followed  by 
others  both  in  Rome  and  especially  in  Venice. 

Early  Venetian  printing  forms  one  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished chapters  in  the  whole  history  of  the  subject. 
The  most  famous  of  the  first  generation  was  Nicolas 
Jenson,  a  Frenchman  who  had  learned  the  art  in  Ger- 
many. Between  1470  and  his  death  in  1480  he  printed 
many  fine  books,  and  in  most  of  them  he  employed  what 
is  now  called  roman  type.  He  was  not  absolutely  the 
first  to  use  the  roman  alphabet,  but  his  roman  fonts 
were  designed  and  cast  with  such  artistic  taste,  such  a 
fine  sense  of  proportion  and  symmetry  of  form,  that 
the  Jenson  roman  became  the  model  of  later  printers 
for  many  years  after  his  death.  Roman  type,  unlike  the 
black-letter,  had  two  distinct  origins.  The  capitals  were 
derived  from  the  letters  used  by  the  ancient  Roman 
architects  for  inscriptions  on  public  buildings.  The  small 
letters  were  adapted  from  the  rounded  vertical  style  of 
writing  used  in  many  Italian  texts,  altogether  difl^erent 
in  form  from  the  angular  gothic  alphabet  used  in  eccle- 
siastical manuscripts.  Jenson 's  roman  letters  were  clear, 
sharp  and  easy  to  read,  and  constituted  the  greatest 
single  addition  to  the  art  of  printing  since  its  beginning. 
10  ^ 


Germany  clung  obstinately  to  the  black-letter  in  its 
Latin  books,  as  it  has  adhered  down  to  very  recent 
times  to  a  similar  heavy  type  for  the  printing  of  German 
text;  but  the  rest  of  Europe  within  a  few  years  came  over 
to  the  clearer  and  more  beautiful  roman. 

There  were  many  early  printers  at  Venice  between 
Jenson  and  his  greater  successor  Aldus  Manutius,  who 
began  business  in  1494,  but  we  shall  pass  over  them  all 
in  order  to  devote  more  careful  attention  to  the  noble 
history  of  the  Aldine  press.  I  propose  in  the  remainder 
of  this  paper  to  select  five  great  printers  of  the  Renais- 
sance, and  to  examine  their  work  both  as  a  whole  and 
as  illustrated  in  typical  examples.  These  five  are : 

ALDUS  MANUTIUS,  of  Venice. 

ROBERT  ESTIENNE,  of  Paris,  commonly 
known  by  the  name  of  Stephanus. 

JOHANN   FROBEN,  of  Basel. 

ANTON   KOBERGER,  of  Nuremberg. 

WILLIAM    CAXTON,  of  London. 

Each  stands  for  a  different  aspect  of  the  art  of  printing, 
both  in  the  mechanical  features  of  book-making  and  also 
in  the  selection  of  works  to  be  published  and  the  editorial 
methods  employed  in  making  them  ready  for  the  press. 
Taken  together,  the  books  issued  from  their  presses  at 
the  end  of  the  fifteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  six- 
teenth century  form  a  sort  of  composite  picture  of  the 
Renaissance. 


II 


OalpvsO 


First  of  all,  in  our  consideration  and  in  order  of  greatness, 
stands  the  name  of  Aldus  Manutius.  The  books  of  the 
Aldine  press,  all  with  the  well-known  sign  of  the  anchor 
and  dolphin,  are  familiar  to  most  students  of  the  classics. 
Aldus  was  born  in  1450,  the  very  year  of  Gutenberg's 
invention.  For  the  first  forty  years  of  his  life  he  was  a 
scholar,  devoting  himself  to  the  Latin  classics  and  to  the 
mastery  of  the  newly  revived  Greek  language  and  litera- 
ture. His  intimate  association  with  Pico  della  Mirandola 


12 


and  other  Italian  scholars,  as  well  as  with  many  of  the 
learned  Greeks  who  then  frequented  Italian  courts  and 
cities,  led  him  to  conceive  the  great  plan  upon  which  his 
later  career  was  based.  This  was  nothing  less  than  to  issue 
practically  the  whole  body  of  classic  literature,  Greek  as 
well  as  Latin,  in  editions  distinguished  from  all  that  had 
preceded  in  two  important  respects.  First,  they  were  to 
be  not  reprints  of  received  uncritical  texts  but  new  revis- 
ions made  by  competent  scholars  based  upon  a  compari- 
son of  all  the  best  available  manuscripts.  Secondly,  they 
were  to  be  printed  not  in  ponderous  and  costly  folios  but 
in  small  octavos  of  convenient  size,  small  but  clear  type, 
and  low  price.  This  was  not  primarily  a  commercial  ven- 
ture like  the  cheap  texts  of  the  classics  issued  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  by  Teubner  and  other  German  publish- 
ers, but  resembled  rather  in  its  broad  humanistic  spirit 
such  a  recent  enterprise  as  the  Loeb  Classical  Library. 
The  purpose  in  each  case  was  to  revive  and  encourage 
the  reading  of  the  classics  not  alone  by  schoolboys  but 
by  men  of  all  ages  and  all  professions.  But  there  is  this 
important  difference,  that  Mr.  Loeb  is  a  retired  million- 
aire who  employs  scholars  to  do  all  the  work  and  merely 
foots  the  bill,  while  Aldus  was  a  poor  man  dependent 
upon  such  capital  as  he  could  borrow  from  his  patrons, 
and  had  at  the  same  time  to  perform  for  himself  a  large 
part  of  the  editorial  labors  on  his  books.  Mr.  Loeb 
commands  the  latest  and  most  complete  resources  of 
the  modern  art  of  printing;  Aldus  helped  to  make  that 
art.  Mr.  Loeb's  editors  may  employ  when  they  choose 
the  style  of  type  known  as  italic;  Aldus  invented  it. 
Mr.  Loeb's  publishers  have  at  their  command  all  the 
advertising  and  selling  machinery  of  a  great  modern  busi- 

13 


ness  concern,  and  yet  they  do  not,  and  probably  can  not, 
make  the  classics  pay  for  themselves,  but  must  meet  the 
deficits  out  of  an  endowment.  Aldus  had  to  organize  his 
own  selling  system,  his  advertising  had  to  be  largely  by 
private  correspondence  with  scholars  and  book-sellers 
throughout  Europe  laboriously  composed  with  his  own 
hand;  yet  it  was  imperative  that  the  business  become  as 
soon  as  possible  self-supporting,  or  at  least  that  losses  in 
one  quarter  should  be  recouped  by  profits  in  another. 

It  was  in  his  edition  of  Virgil,  1 501 ,  that  Aldus  first  em- 
ployed the  new  cursive  or  sloping  letter  which  later  came 
to  be  known  in  English  printing  as  itahc  type.  According 
to  tradition  he  copied  it  closely  from  the  handwriting  of 
the  Italian  poet  Petrarch.  The  type  was  very  compact, 
covering  many  more  words  on  a  page  than  the  roman  of 
that  day,  and  was  used  as  a  body  type,  not  as  in  our  day 
for  isolated  words  and  phrases  set  apart  for  emphasis  or 
other  distinction  from  the  rest  of  the  text.  Aldus  also, 
though  not  the  first  to  cast  Greek  type,  gave  his  Greek 
fonts  an  elegance  which  was  soon  imitated,  like  the  italic, 
by  other  printers.  By  the  introduction  of  small  types 
which  were  at  the  same  time  legible,  and  by  adopting  for 
his  classical  texts  a  small  format  suitable  for  pocket-size 
books,  Aldus  invented  the  modern  small  book.  No  longer 
was  it  necessary  for  a  scholar  to  rest  a  heavy  folio  on  a 
table  in  order  to  read;  he  might  carry  with  him  on  a  jour- 
ney half  a  dozen  of  these  beautiful  little  books  in  no  more 
space  than  a  single  volume  of  the  older  printers.  Further- 
more, his  prices  were  low.  The  pocket  editions  or  small 
octavos  sold  for  about  two  lire,  or  forty  cents  in  the  money 
of  that  day,  the  purchasing  power  of  which  in  modern 
money  is  estimated  at  not  above  two  dollars. 

14 


This  popularizing  of  literature  and  of  classical  learn- 
ing did  not  meet  with  universal  favor  amongst  his 
countrymen.  We  read  of  one  Italian  who  warned  Aldus 
that  if  he  kept  on  spreading  Italian  scholarship  beyond 
the  Alps  at  nominal  prices  the  outer  barbarians  would 
no  longer  come  to  Italy  to  study  Greek,  but  would  stay 
at  home  and  read  their  Aldine  editions  without  adding 
a  penny  to  the  income  of  Italian  cities.  Such  a  fear 
was  not  unfounded,  for  the  poorer  scholars  of  Germany 
and  the  Netherlands  did  actually  find  that  they  could 
stay  at  home  and  get  for  a  few  francs  the  ripest  results 
of  Italian  and  Greek  scholarship.  This  gave  Aldus  no 
concern;  if  he  could  render  international  services  to 
learning,  if  he  could  help  to  set  up  among  the  humbler 
scholars  of  other  lands  such  a  fine  rivalry  of  competitive 
cooperation  as  already  existed  among  such  leaders  as 
Erasmus  and  Sir  Thomas  More,  he  should  be  well  con- 
tent to  live  laborious  days  and  to  die  poor.  Both  these 
he  did;  but  he  gathered  around  him  such  a  company  of 
friends  and  collaborators  as  few  men  have  enjoyed;  he 
must  have  breathed  with  a  rare  exhilaration,  born  of 
honest  and  richly  productive  toil,  the  very  air  of  Athens 
in  her  glory;  and  he  must  have  realized  sometimes  amid 
the  dust  and  heat  of  the  printing  shop  that  it  was  given 
to  him  at  much  cost  of  life  and  grinding  toil  to  stand 
upon  the  threshold  of  the  golden  age  alike  of  typography 
and  of  the  revival  of  learning.  In  15 14,  the  year  before 
his  death,  Aldus  wrote  to  a  friend  a  letter  of  which  I  bor- 
row a  translation  from  George  Haven  Putnam's  Books 
and  Their  Makers  during  the  Middle  Ages.  This  is  the 
picture  Aldus  drew  of  his  daily  routine: 


15 


"I  am  hampered  in  my  work  by  a  thousand  interruptions. 
Nearly  every  hour  comes  a  letter  from  some  scholar,  and  if  1 
undertook  to  reply  to  them  all,  I  should  be  obliged  to  devote  day 
and  night  to  scribbling.  Then  through  the  day  come  calls  from 
all  kinds  of  visitors.  Some  desire  merely  to  give  a  word  of  greet- 
ing, others  want  to  know  what  there  is  new,  while  the  greater 
number  come  to  my  office  because  they  happen  to  have  nothing 
else  to  do.  *Let  us  look  in  upon  Aldus,'  they  say  to  each  other. 
Then  they  loaf  in  and  sit  and  chatter  to  no  purpose.  Even  these 
people  with  no  business  are  not  so  bad  as  those  who  have  a  poem 
to  offer  or  something  in  prose  (usually  very  prosy  indeed)  which 
they  wish  to  see  printed  with  the  name  of  Aldus.  These  interrup- 
tions are  now  becoming  too  serious  for  me,  and  I  must  take  steps 
to  lessen  them.  Many  letters  I  simply  leave  unanswered,  while 
to  others  I  send  very  brief  replies;  and  as  I  do  this  not  from  pride 
or  from  discourtesy,  but  simply  in  order  to  be  able  to  go  on  with 
my  task  of  printing  good  books,  it  must  not  be  taken  hardly.  As 
a  warning  to  the  heedless  visitors  who  use  up  my  office  hours  to 
no  purpose,  I  have  now  put  up  a  big  notice  on  the  door  of  my 
office  to  the  following  effect:  Whoever  thou  art,  thou  art  earn- 
estly requested  by  Aldus  to  state  thy  business  briefly  and  to  take 
thy  departure  promptly.  In  this  way  thou  mayest  be  of  service 
even  as  was  Hercules  to  the  weary  Atlas.  For  this  is  a  place  of 
work  for  all  who  enter." 

What  a  picture  that  letter  gives  us  of  the  half  humor- 
ous, half  pathetic  spirit  in  which  the  great  publisher  en- 
dured the  daily  grind.  Twenty  years  of  it  wore  him  out, 
but  his  dolphin-and-anchor  trade-mark  still  after  four 
centuries  preaches  patience  and  hope  to  all  who  under- 
take great  burdens  for  the  enlightenment  of  mankind. 

The  Aldine  press  did  not  confine  its  efforts  to  the 
ancient  classics,  but  printed  editions  of  Dante  and 
Petrarch  and  other  Italian  poets,  and  produced  the  first 
editions  of  some  of  the  most  important  works  of  Eras- 
mus. But  all  of  its  publications  belonged  in  general  to 
the  movement  known  as  humanism,  the  field  of  ancient 
i6 


and  contemporary  poetry,  drama,  philosophy,  history, 
and  art.  Aldus  left  to  others,  especially  to  the  great 
ecclesiastical  printers  of  Venice  and  of  Rome,  the  print- 
ing of  the  scriptures,  the  works  of  the  church  fathers, 
and  the  innumerable  volumes  of  theological  controversy 
with  which  the  age  abounded.  In  France,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  great  publishing  house  of  the  Estiennes,  or 
Stephani,  to  whom  we  next  direct  our  attention,  divided 
its  efforts  between  the  secular  and  sacred  literature. 
Inasmuch  as  the  history  of  the  Stephanus  establishment 
is  typical  of  the  influence  of  printing  upon  the  Renais- 
sance, and  of  the  Renaissance  upon  printing,  which  is 
the  subject  of  this  paper,  we  may  well  examine  some 
aspects  of  its  career. 

Printing  had  been  introduced  into  France  in  1469  by 
the  ecclesiastics  of  the  Sorbonne.  Like  that  abbot  of 
Subiaco  who  set  up  the  first  press  in  Italy  five  years 
before,  these  professors  of  scholastic  philosophy  and 
theology  at  Paris  did  not  realize  that  the  new  art  had 
in  it  the  possibilities  of  anti-clerical  and  heretical  use. 
For  the  first  generation  the  French  printers  enjoyed  a 
considerable  freedom  from  censorship  and  burdensome 
restrictions.  They  published,  like  the  Venetians,  both  the 
Greek  and  Latin  classics  and  the  works  of  contemporary 
writers.  Both  Louis  XII.  and  Francis  I.  gave  their  pat- 
ronage and  encouragement  to  various  eminent  scholar- 
printers  who  flourished  between  the  establishment  of 
the  first  publishing-houses  in  Paris  and  the  beginning 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  I  pass  over  all  these  to  select 
as  the  typical  French  printers  of  the  Renaissance  the 
family  founded  by  Henri  Estienne  the  elder.  His  first 
book,  a  Latin  translation  of  Aristotle's  Ethica,  appeared 

17 


in  1 504.  From  that  date  for  nearly  a  hundred  years  the 
house  of  Stephanus  and  his  descendants  led  the  pub- 
lishing business  in  France.  Both  in  the  artistic  advance- 
ment of  the  art  of  printing  and  in  the  intellectual  ad- 
vancement of  French  thought  by  their  selection  of  the 
works  to  be  issued  they  earned  a  right  to  the  enduring 
gratitude  of  mankind. 

Henri  Estienne,  the  founder  of  the  house,  who  died 
in  1520,  had  published  during  these  sixteen  years  at 
least  one  hundred  separate  works.  Although  they  were 
mostly  Latin,  many  of  them  revealed  Estienne's  know- 
ledge of  and  devotion  to  the  new  Greek  studies,  and  this 
tendency  on  his  part  was  at  once  suspected  as  heretical 
by  the  orthodox  doctors  of  the  Sorbonne.  The  favor  of 
King  Francis  was  not  at  all  times  sufficient  to  protect 
him  from  persecution,  and  an  increasing  severity  of  cen- 
sorship arose,  the  full  force  of  which  began  to  be  evident 
in  the  time  of  his  son  Robert. 

After  Henri's  death  his  business  was  for  a  time  carried 
on  by  his  widow's  second  husband,  Simon  Colines,  a 
scholar  and  humanist  of  brilliant  attainments.  Both 
while  at  the  head  of  the  house  of  Stephanus  and  later 
when  he  had  withdrawn  from  that  in  favor  of  Robert 
Estienne  his  stepson  and  set  up  a  separate  publishing 
business,  Colines  added  much  to  the  prestige  of  French 
printing.  He  caused  Greek  fonts  to  be  cast,  not  inferior 
to  those  of  the  Venetian  printers,  and  began  to  publish 
the  Greek  classics  in  beautiful  editions.  It  was  Cohnes, 
rather  than  either  the  elder  or  the  younger  Estienne,  who 
elevated  the  artistic  side  of  French  printing  by  engaging 
the  services  of  such  famous  typographical  experts  as 
Geofroy  Tory,  and  adding  to  his  books  illustrations  of 
18 


the  highest  excellence,  as  well  as  decorative  initials  and 
borders.  Indeed  it  may  be  said  that  after  the  death  of 
Aldus  supremacy  in  the  fine  art  of  book-making  gradu- 
ally passed  from  Venice  to  Paris. 


The  greatest  of  the  Estiennes  was  Robert,  son  of  Henri 
Estienne  and  stepson  of  Colines,  who  was  in  control  of 
the  house  from  1524  to  his  death  in  1559.  The  very  first 
book  he  published  was  an  edition  of  the  Latin  Testa- 
ment. Although  following  in  the  main  the  Vulgate  or 

19 


official  Bible  of  the  Roman  Church,  he  introduced  cer- 
tain corrections  based  on  his  knowledge  of  the  Greek 
text.  This  marked  the  beginning  of  a  long  controversy 
between  Estienne  and  the  orthodox  divines  of  the  Sor- 
bonne,  which  lasted  almost  throughout  his  life.  In  fol- 
lowing years  he  published  many  editions  of  the  Latin 
scriptures,  each  time  with  additional  corrections,  and 
eventually  with  his  own  notes  and  comments,  in  some 
cases  attacking  the  received  doctrines  of  the  Church.  A 
Hebrew  Old  Testament,  in  1546,  was  followed  in  1550 
by  the  Greek  New  Testament.  The  next  year  he  published 
a  new  edition  of  the  Testament  in  which  for  the  first 
time  it  was  divided  into  verses,  a  precedent  followed  in 
Bible  printing  ever  since.  It  was  not  merely  the  fact  of 
his  printing  the  scriptures  at  all  that  angered  the  heresy- 
hunters,  but  much  more  Estienne's  notes  and  comments, 
in  which,  like  Luther  in  Germany  and  Tyndale  in  Eng- 
land, he  sided  with  the  views  of  the  Reformers. 

What  distinguishes  Robert  Estienne  from  the  ordi- 
nary Protestant  scholars  and  publishers  of  his  time  is  the 
fact  that  he  was  not  only  a  Reformer  but  a  humanist  of 
broad  and  tolerant  culture.  In  all  the  illustrious  group 
of  that  age  there  is  scarcely  another  like  him  in  this  union 
of  religious  zeal  and  of  scholarly  culture.  Luther  and 
Calvin  and  Tyndale  had  the  one;  Erasmus  is  the  most 
eminent  example  of  the  other,  with  such  great  publishers 
as  Aldus  and  Froben  his  worthy  supporters.  But  Robert 
Estienne,  alongside  of  his  controversial  works  and  Bib- 
lical texts,  labored  at  such  great  enterprises  as  his  monu- 
mental edition  of  Terence,  in  which  he  corrected  by  the 
soundest  methods  of  textual  criticism  no  less  than  six 
thousand  errors  in  the  received  text,  and  especially  his 
20 


magnificent  lexicons  of  the  Latin  and  Greek  languages, 
which  set  the  standard  for  all  other  lexicographers  for 
generations  to  come. 

The  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  In  France  is  thus 
marked  by  a  curious  blend  of  those  two  distinct  move- 
ments in  human  history  which  we  call  the  Renaissance 
and  the  Reformation,  and  the  blend  is  nowhere  more 
picturesque  than  in  the  life  of  Robert  Estienne.  At  one 
moment  we  find  him  attacking  the  abuses  of  the  church, 
at  another  we  find  him  consulting  with  Claude  Gara- 
mond  upon  the  design  of  a  new  Greek  type,  or  reading 
the  final  proofs  of  an  edition  of  Horace  or  Catullus  or 
Juvenal,  or  discussing  with  some  wealthy  and  noble 
book-collector  like  the  famous  Grolier  the  latest  styles 
in  elegant  bindings  and  gold-stamped  decoration.  For 
beauty  and  for  truth  he  had  an  equal  passion.  All  that 
romance  of  the  imagination  which  touches  with  a  golden 
glamour  the  recovered  treasures  of  pagan  antiquity  he 
loved  as  intensely  as  if  it  were  not  alien  and  hostile,  as 
the  many  thought,  to  that  glow  of  spiritual  piety,  that 
zeal  of  martyrdom,  that  white,  consuming  splendor  which 
for  the  mystical  imagination  surrounds  the  holy  cross. 
Humanism  at  its  best  is  ordinarily  thought  to  be  embod- 
ied in  the  many-sldedfigureof  Erasmus,  with  his  sanity, 
his  balance,  his  power  to  see  both  sides,  that  of  Luther 
and  of  the  Church,  his  delicate  satire,  his  saving  humor, 
his  avoidance  of  the  zealot's  extremes.  Perhaps  a  not 
less  striking  figure  is  that  of  this  much  less  known  French 
printer,  striving  in  the  midst  of  petty  cares  and  un- 
lovely sectarian  strife  to  maintain  the  stoical  serenity  of 
a  Marcus  Aurelius  side  by  side  with  the  spiritual  exal- 
tation of  a  Saint  Paul.  There  are  two  types  of  great  men 

21 


equally  worthy  of  admiration:  those  of  unmixed  and  life- 
long devotion  to  a  single  aim  springing  from  a  single 
source,  such  as  Aldus  Manutius,  and  those  in  whom  that 
balance  of  diverse  and  almost  contradictory  elements  of 
character  which  commonly  leads  to  weakness  makes  in- 
stead for  strength  and  for  richness,  for  duty  and  delight. 
Such  was  Robert  Estienne. 


22 


The  third  printer  whom  I  have  selected  as  typical  of  the 
Renaissance  is  Johann  Froben,  of  Basel.  His  chief  dis- 
tinction is  that  he  was  the  closest  friend  and  associate 
of  Erasmus,  the  principal  publisher  of  Erasmus's  works, 
and  the  representative  in  the  book  trade  of  the  Eras- 
mian  attitude  toward  the  Reformation.  Although  he  did 
print  the  Greek  Testament,  years  before  Estienne  pub- 
lished his  edition  in  Paris,  he  accompanied  it  with  no  dis- 
tinctively Protestant  comments.  Although  at  one  time 

23 


he  issued  some  of  the  earHer  works  of  Luther,  he  desisted 
when  it  became  evident  that  Erasmus  opposed  any  open 
schism  in  the  Church.  It  was  Froben  who  gave  to  the 
world  those  three  famous  works  of  Erasmus,  the  Enco- 
mium Moriae  or  Praise  of  Folly,  the  Adagia  or  Proverbs, 
and  the  Colloquia  or  Conversations,  which  did  quite  as 
much  as  the  writings  of  Luther  to  arouse  independent 
thinking  within  the  Church,  and  to  bring  to  an  end  the 
last  vestiges  of  the  middle  ages  in  church  and  state. 
And  in  this  relation  of  Froben  to  Erasmus  there  was  not 
the  mere  commercial  attitude  of  a  shrewd  publisher  to- 
ward a  successful  author  whose  works  became  highly 
lucrative,  but  the  support  by  one  enlightened  scholar 
who  happened  to  be  in  a  profitable  business  of  another 
who  happened  to  be  out  of  it.  The  earlier  life  of  Erasmus 
exhibits  a  rather  depressing  illustration  of  the  humilia- 
tions to  which  professional  scholars  were  exposed  in  try- 
ing to  get  a  living  from  the  pensions  and  benefactions  of 
the  idle  rich.  Literary  patronage,  as  it  existed  from  the 
days  of  Horace  and  Maecenas  down  to  the  death-blow 
which  Dr.  Johnson  gave  it  in  his  famous  letter  to  Lord 
Chesterfield,  has  never  helped  the  independence  or  the 
self-respect  of  scholars  and  poets.  It  was  Froben 's  pecu- 
liar good  fortune  to  be  able  to  employ,  on  a  business  basis 
with  a  regular  salary,  the  greatest  scholar  of  the  age  as 
one  of  his  editors  and  literary  advisers,  and  at  the 
same  time  enable  him  to  preserve  his  independence  of 
thought  and  of  action.  Aldus  and  the  French  publishers 
had  gathered  about  them  professional  scholars  and  ex- 
perts for  the  execution  of  specific  tasks  at  the  market 
price,  supplemented  often  by  generous  private  hospital- 
ity. That  was  good;  but  far  better  was  Froben's  relation 
24 


with  his  friend,  his  intellectual  master,  and  his  profitable 
client  Erasmus.  In  an  age  when  no  copyright  laws  exist- 
ed for  the  author's  benefit  the  works  of  Erasmus  were 
shamelessly  pirated  in  editions,  published  in  Germany 
and  France,  from  which  the  author  received  not  a  penny. 
Yet  Froben  went  right  on  paying  to  Erasmus  not  only 
the  fixed  annual  salary  as  a  member  of  his  consulting 
staff  but  also  a  generous  share  of  the  profits  upon  his 
books.  In  a  greedy,  unscrupulous,  and  rapacious  age  this 
wise  and  just,  not  to  say  generous,  policy  stands  out  as 
prophetic  of  a  better  time. 

As  a  printer  Froben  was  distinguished  by  the  singular 
beauty  of  his  roman  type,  the  perfection  of  his  press- 
work,  and  the  artistic  decoration  of  his  books.  In  this 
last  respect  he  was  much  indebted  to  the  genius  of  Hans 
Holbein,  whom  he  discovered  as  a  young  wood-engraver 
seeking  work  as  Basel.  With  that  keen  eye  for  unrec- 
ognized genius  which  marked  his  career  he  employed 
Holbein  to  design  borders  and  initials  for  his  books. 
Later,  with  an  equally  sagacious  and  generous  spirit,  per- 
ceiving that  the  young  artist  was  too  great  a  man  to 
spend  his  days  in  a  printing  office,  he  procured  for  him 
through  Sir  Thomas  More  an  introduction  to  the  court 
of  Henry  VIII,  where  he  won  fame  and  fortune  as  a  por- 
trait painter.  I  narrate  the  incident  because  it  illustrates 
a  very  attractive  and  amiable  aspect  of  some  of  these 
men  of  the  Renaissance,  an  uncalculating  and  generous 
desire  to  help  gifted  men  to  find  their  true  place  in  the 
world  where  they  might  do  their  largest  work.  This,  in  an 
age  when  competition  and  jealous  rivalry  in  public  and  in 
private  life  was  as  common  as  it  is  now,  may  give  pause 
to  the  cynic  and  joy  to  the  lover  of  human  kindness. 

^5 


ANTON   KOBERGER 

(No  primer  s  mark  known) 

We  are  in  a  different  world  when  we  turn  to  the  fourth 
of  our  five  representative  printers,  Anton  Koberger,  of 
Nuremberg.  During  the  forty  years  of  his  career  as  a 
pubhsher,  between  1473  and  1513,  he  issued  236  sepa- 
rate works,  most  of  them  in  several  volumes,  and  of  the 
whole  lot  none  show  any  taint  of  reforming  zeal.  Kober- 
ger was  a  loyal  Catholic,  and  his  published  books  were 
largely  theological  and  all  strictly  orthodox  in  nature. 
He  is  distinguished  in  two  respects  from  the  other  Ger- 
man printers  of  his  time,  the  time  between  the  death  of 
Gutenberg  and  the  rise  of  Martin  Luther.  In  the  first 
place  his  work  showed  great  typographical  excellence, 
with  many  fonts  of  handsome  Gothic  type  and  a  lavish 
use  of  woodcut  illustrations.  In  the  second  place,  his 
publishing  business  was  far  better  organized,  far  more 
extensive  In  its  selling  and  distributing  machinery, 
than  that  of  any  other  printer  in  Europe.  We  learn  that 
he  had  agents  not  only  in  every  German  city,  but  in  the 
very  headquarters  of  his  greatest  competitors  at  Paris, 
Venice,  and  Rome,  and  in  such  more  distant  places  as 
Vienna,  Buda-Pesth,  and  Warsaw.  The  twenty-four 
presses  in  his  own  Nuremberg  establishment  were  not 
sufficient  for  his  enormous  business,  and  he  let  out  print- 
ing jobs  on  contract  or  commission  to  printers  at  Stras- 
burg,  Basel,  and  elsewhere.  The  true  German  spirit  of 
26 


discipline  appears  in  a  contemporary  account  of  his  print- 
ing plant  at  Nuremberg.  He  had  more  than  a  hundred 
workmen  there,  including  not  only  compositors,  press- 
men, and  proof-readers,  but  binders,  engravers,  and 
illuminators.  All  these  were  fed  by  their  employer  in  a 
common  dining-hall  apart  from  the  works,  and  we  are 
told  that  they  marched  between  the  two  buildings  three 
times  a  day  with  military  precision. 

Koberger  employed  for  a  time  the  services  of  Albrecht 
Diirer,  the  famous  engraver,  not  only  for  the  illustration 
of  books  but  also  for  expert  oversight  of  the  typograph- 
ical form.  Typography  in  its  golden  age  was  rightly  re- 
garded not  as  a  mere  mechanical  trade  but  as  an  art  of 
design,  a  design  in  black  upon  white,  in  which  the  just 
proportion  of  columns  and  margins  and  titles  and  initials 
was  quite  as  important  as  the  illustrations.  Perhaps 
Koberger  found  Diirer  too  independent  or  too  expensive 
for  his  taste,  for  we  find  him  in  his  later  illustrated  works 
employing  engravers  more  prolific  than  expert.  Such 
were  Michael  Wolgemut  and  Wilhelm  PleydenwurflF, 
who  drew  and  engraved  the  two  thousand  illustrations  in 
the  famous  Nuremberg  Chronicle  published  by  Koberger 
in  1493.  This  remarkable  work  was  compiled  by  Doctor 
Hartman  Schedel,  of  Nuremberg.  It  is  a  history  of  the 
world  from  the  creation  down  to  1493,  with  a  supple- 
ment containing  a  full  illustrated  account  of  the  end  of 
the  world,  the  Millennium,  and  the  last  judgment.  This 
is  by  no  means  all.  There  is  combined  with  this  out- 
line of  history,  not  less  ambitious  though  perhaps  not 
more  eccentric  than  H.  G.  Wells's  latest  book,  a  gazet- 
teer of  the  world  in  general  and  of  Europe  in  particular, 
a  portrait  gallery  of  all  distinguished  men  from  Adam 

27 


and  Methuselah  down  to  the  reigning  emperor,  kings, 
and  pope  of  1493,  with  many  intimate  studies  of  the 
devil,  and  a  large  variety  of  rather  substantial  and  Teu- 
tonic angels.  Every  city  in  Europe  is  shown  in  a  front 
elevation  in  which  the  perspective  reminds  one  of  Japan- 
ese art,  and  the  castle-towers  and  bridges  and  river- 
boats  all  bear  a  strong  family  resemblance.  The  book 
is  full  of  curious  material,  quite  apart  from  the  quaint 
illustrations.  In  the  midst  of  grave  affairs  of  state  we 
run  across  a  plague  of  locusts,  an  eclipse  of  the  sun,  or  a 
pair  of  lovers  who  died  for  love.  Scandalous  anecdotes 
of  kings  and  priests  jostle  the  fiercest  denunciations  of 
heretics  and  reformers.  A  page  is  devoted  to  the  here- 
sies of  Wyclif  and  Huss.  Anti-Semitism  runs  rampant 
through  its  pages.  Various  detailed  accounts  are  given 
of  the  torture  and  murder  of  Christian  boys  by  Jews, 
followed  by  the  capture  and  burning  alive  of  the  con- 
spirators. Superstition  and  intolerance  stand  side  by 
side  with  a  naive  mystical  piety  and  engaging  stories  of 
the  saints  and  martyrs.  Of  all  the  vast  transformation  in 
human  thought  that  was  then  taking  form  in  Italy,  of 
all  the  forward-looking  signs  of  the  times,  there  is  little 
trace.  From  1493  to  the  last  dim  ages  of  the  expiring 
world,  the  downfall  of  Antichrist  and  the  setting  up  of 
the  final  kingdom  of  heaven  upon  earth,  seemed  but  a 
little  way  to  Hartman  Schedel,  when  he  wrote  with 
much  complacence  the  colophon  to  this  strange  volume. 
He  left  three  blank  leaves  between  1493  and  the  Day 
of  Judgment  whereon  the  reader  might  record  what 
remained  of  human  history.  It  is  indeed  rather  the 
last  voice  of  the  middle  ages  than  the  first  voice  of  the 
Renaissance  that  speaks  to  us  out  of  these  clear,  black, 
28 


handsome  pages  that  were  pulled  damp  from  the  press 
four  hundred  and  twenty-eight  years  ago  on  the  fourth 
of  last  June.  At  first  reading  one  is  moved  to  mirth,  then 
to  wonder,  then  perhaps  to  disgust,  but  last  of  all  to 
the  haunting  melancholy  of  Omar  the  tent-maker  when 
he  sings 

"When  you  and  I  behind  the  veil  are  past. 
Oh,  but  the  long,  long  while  the  world  shall  last." 

As  to  worthy  Hartman  Schedel,  God  rest  his  soul,  one 
wonders  whether  he  has  yet  learned  that  Columbus  dis- 
covered America.  He  had  not  yet  heard  of  it  when  he 
finished  his  book,  though  Columbus  had  returned  to 
Spain  three  months  before.  O  most  lame  and  impotent 
conclusion !  But  the  fifteenth  century,  though  it  had  an 
infinite  childlike  curiosity,  had  no  nose  for  news.  Nurem- 
berg nodded  peacefully  on  while  a  new  world  loomed  up 
beyond  the  seas,  and  studied  Michael  Wolgemut's  pic- 
ture of  Noah  building  the  ark  while  Columbus  was  fit- 
ting out  the  Santa  Maria  for  a  second  voyage.  Such  is 
mankind,  blind  and  deaf  to  the  greatest  things.  We  know 
not  the  great  hour  when  it  strikes.  We  are  indeed  most 
enthralled  by  the  echoing  chimes  of  the  romantic  past 
when  the  future  sounds  its  faint  far-oflF  reveille  upon  our 
unheeding  ears.  The  multitude  understands  noon  and 
night;  only  the  wise  man  understands  the  morning. 


29 


g^^c^^^^:;^^^^^^^^^^:^^^ 


\i.i,i.iii.iiiii!i.i.imiiiiiiiii! 


And  now  finally,  what  of  William  Caxton  ?  The  father  of 
English  printing  had  been  for  many  years  an  English 
merchant  residing  in  Bruges  when  his  increasing  atten- 
tion to  hterature  led  him  to  acquire  the  new  art  of  print- 
ing. He  had  already  translated  from  the  French  the 
Histories  of  Troy,  and  was  preparing  to  undertake  other 

30 


editorial  labors  when  he  became  associated  with  Colard 
Mansion,  a  Bruges  printer.  From  Mansion  he  learned 
the  art  and  presumably  purchased  his  first  press  and 
type.  Six  books  bearing  Caxton's  imprint  were  published 
at  Bruges  between  1474  and  1476,  though  it  is  possible 
that  the  actual  printing  was  done  by  Mansion  rather 
than  by  Caxton  himself.  In  1476  Caxton  set  up  the 
first  printing  shop  in  England,  in  a  house  within  the  pre- 
cincts of  Westminster  Abbey.  Between  that  date  and 
his  death  in  149 1  he  printed  ninety-three  separate  works, 
some  of  these  in  several  editions.  His  industry  and  schol- 
arly zeal  as  a  publisher  somewhat  exceeded  his  technical 
skill  as  a  printer.  Caxton's  books,  which  are  now  much 
rarer  than  those  of  many  continental  printers  of  the 
same  period,  are  not  so  finely  and  beautifully  done  as 
the  best  of  theirs.  But  the  pecuHar  interest  of  his  work 
lies  in  the  striking  variety  of  the  works  he  chose  for  pub- 
lication, the  conscientious  zeal  with  which  he  conceived 
and  performed  his  task,  and  the  quiet  humor  of  his  pref- 
aces and  notes.  Let  me  illustrate  briefly  these  three 
points.  First,  his  variety.  We  have  observed  that  Aldus 
and  Froben  published  chiefly  the  Latin  and  Greek  clas- 
sics, Koberger  the  Latin  scriptures  and  theological  works, 
and  Stephanus  a  combination  of  classics  and  theology. 
Caxton  published  few  of  the  classics  and  very  little  the- 
ology. His  books  consist  largely  of  the  works  of  the  early 
English  poets,  Chaucer,  Gower,  and  others,  of  mediae- 
val romances  derived  from  English,  French,  and  Italian 
sources,  and  of  chronicles  and  histories.  The  two  most 
famous  works  that  came  from  his  press  were  the  first 
printed  editions  of  Chaucer's  Canterbury  Tales  and 
Malory's  Morte  d'Arthur.  His  own  English  translation 

:  31 


of  the  Golden  Legend,  a  mediaeval  Latin  collection  of 
lives  of  the  saints,  is  scarcely  less  in  importance.  Among 
many  other  titles  the  following  may  serve  to  show  how 
unusual  and  unconventional  were  his  selections: 

The  History  of  Reynard  the  Fox. 

The  History  of  Godfrey  of  Boloyne,  or  the  Conquest 

of  Jerusalem. 
The  Fables  of  Aesop. 
The  Book  of  Good  Maners. 
The  Faytes  of  Armes  and  of  Chy valrye. 
The  Governayle  of  Helthe. 
The  Arte  and  Crafte  to  Know  Well  to  Dye. 

This  is  indeed  humanism,  but  humanism  in  a  different 
sense  from  that  of  Aldus  and  Erasmus.  Human  life  from 
the  cradle  to  the  grave,  human  life  in  war  and  peace, 
human  life  in  its  gayer  and  its  graver  lights  and  shadows, 
human  life  as  embodied  equally  in  famous  writers  and 
in  anonymous  popular  legends,  was  Caxton's  field.  He 
accounted  nothing  human  alien  to  his  mind  or  to  his 
great  enterprise. 

Again,  Caxton  was  conscientious.  He  set  great  store 
by  accuracy,  not  only  typographical  accuracy  in  mat- 
ters of  detail,  but  also  the  general  accuracy  of  the  texts 
or  sources  from  which  his  own  translations  and  his  edi- 
tions of  other  works  were  made.  For  example,  in  the 
second  edition  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  he  explains  how 
the  first  edition  was  printed  from  the  best  manuscript 
that  he  could  find  in  1478,  but  how  after  the  appear- 
ance of  that  there  came  to  him  a  scholar  who  com- 
plained of  many  errors,  and  spoke  of  another  and  more 

32 


authentic  manuscript  in  his  father's  possession.  Caxton 
at  once  agreed  to  get  out  a  new  edition  "whereas  before 
by  ignorance  I  erred  in  hurting  and  defaming  his  book 
in  divers  places,  in  setting  in  some  things  that  he  never 
said  nor  made  and  leaving  out  many  things  that  are 
made  which  are  requisite  to  be  set  in."  A  great  many 
other  examples  of  such  disinterested  carefulness  are  to 
be  found  in  the  history  of  those  busy  fifteen  years  at 
Westminster.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  he  was  not  only 
editor,  printer,  and  publisher,  but  also  translated  twenty- 
three  books  totaling  more  than  forty-five  hundred  printed 
pages,  this  scholarly  desire  for  accuracy  deserves  the  high- 
est praise.  Unlike  Aldus  and  Froben,  who  were  like- 
wise editors  as  well  as  publishers,  he  was  not  surrounded 
by  a  capable  corps  of  expert  scholars,  but  worked  almost 
alone.  His  faithful  foreman,  Wynkyn  de  Worde,  doubt- 
less took  over  gradually  a  large  share  of  the  purely 
mechanical  side  of  the  business,  but  Caxton  remained 
till  the  end  of  his  life  the  active  head  as  well  as  the 
brains  of  the  concern. 

As  for  his  humor,  it  comes  out  even  in  his  very  selec- 
tions of  books  to  be  printed,  but  chiefly  in  little  touches 
all  through  his  prefaces.  For  example,  in  his  preface  to 
the  Morte  d'Arthur  he  answers  with  a  certain  whimsical 
gravity  the  allegations  of  those  who  maintain  that  there 
was  no  such  person  as  King  Arthur,  and  that  "all  such 
books  as  been  made  of  him  be  but  feigned  and  fables." 
He  recounts  with  assumed  sincerity  the  evidence  of  the 
chronicles,  the  existence  of  Arthur's  seal  in  red  wax  at 
Westminster  Abbey,  of  Sir  Gawain's  skull  at  Dover 
Castle,  of  the  Round  Table  itself  at  Winchester,  and  so 
on.  But  he  goes  on  to  say,  in  his  own  quaint  way,  which 

33 


there  is  not  space  to  quote  at  large,  that  in  his  own 
opinion  the  stories  are  worth  while  for  the  intrinsic  inter- 
est and  the  moral  values  in  them,  whether  they  are  liter- 
ally true  or  not.  He  closes  thus : 

"Herein  may  be  seen  noble  chivalry,  courtesy,  humanity, 
friendliness,  hardiness,  love,  friendship,  cowardice,  murder,  hate 
virtue  and  sin.  Do  after  the  good  and  leave  the  evil,  and  it  shall 
bring  you  to  good  fame  and  renommee.  And  for  to  pass  the  time 
this  book  shall  be  pleasant  to  read  in,  but  for  to  give  faith  and 
belief  that  all  is  true  that  is  contained  herein,  ye  be  at  your 
liberty." 

This  wise,  sane,  gentle  apostle  of  literature  in  England 
wrought  well  in  his  day,  and  is  justly  honored  alike  by 
scholars  and  by  printers,  who  regard  him,  in  England  and 
America,  as  the  father  of  their  craft.  Indeed  to  this  day 
in  the  printing  trade  a  shop  organization  is  sometimes 
called  a  chapel,  because  according  to  ancient  tradition 
Caxton's  workmen  held  their  meetings  in  one  of  the 
chapels  adjoining  the  abbey  of  Westminster. 

This  survey  of  printing  in  its  relations  to  the  Renais- 
sance is  now  not  finished  but  concluded.  I  have  shown 
that  the  invention  and  improvement  of  printing  was  not 
the  cause  but  rather  the  effect  of  the  revival  of  learning, 
while  on  the  other  hand  the  wide  dissemination  of  liter- 
ature made  possible  by  typography  of  course  accelerated 
enormously  the  process  of  popular  enlightenment.  I  have 
selected  five  typical  printers  of  that  age: 

34 


Aldus,  with  his  Homer. 

Stephanus,  with  his  Greek  Testament. 

Froben,  with  his  Plato. 

Koberger,  with  his  Nuremberg  Chronicle. 

Caxton,  with  his  Morte  d'Arthur. 

Here  we  find  represented  in  the  Aldus  Homer  the  re- 
vival of  Greek  learning,  in  the  Stephanus  Testament  the 
application  of  this  to  the  free  criticism  of  the  scriptures, 
in  the  Froben  Plato  the  substitution  of  Platonic  ideal- 
ism for  the  scholastic  philosophy  based  on  Aristotle,  in 
the  Nuremberg  book  the  epitome  of  mediaeval  super- 
stition, credulity,  and  curiosity  on  the  verge  of  the  new 
era,  and  in  Morte  d'Arthur  the  fond  return  of  the  modern 
mind,  facing  an  unknown  future,  upon  the  naive  and 
beautiful  legends  of  Arthurian  romance.  An  age  full  of 
contradictions  and  strange  delusions,  but  an  age  of 
great  vitality,  great  eagerness,  great  industry,  patience, 
foresight,  imagination.  And  in  such  an  age  it  was  the 
good  fortune  of  these  wise  craftsmen  who  handled  so 
deftly  their  paper  and  type  to  be  the  instruments  of 
more  evangels  than  angels  ever  sang,  more  revolutions 
than  gunpowder  ever  achieved,  more  victories  than  ever 
won  the  applause  of  men  or  the  approval  of  heaven.  In 
the  beginning  the  creative  word  was  Fiat  lux — let  there 
be  light.  In  the  new  creation  of  the  human  mind  it  was  , 
Imprimatur — let  it  be  printed.  If  printing  had  never 
been  invented,  it  is  easy  to  conceive  that  the  enormous 
learning  and  intellectual  power  of  a  few  men  in  each 
generation  might  have  gone  on  increasing  so  that  the 
world  might  to-day  possess  most  of  the  knowledge  that 
we  now  enjoy;  but  it  is  certain  that  the  masses  could 

3S 


never  have  been  enlightened,  and  that  therefore  the  gulf 
between  the  wise  few  and  the  ignorant  many  would  have 
exceeded  anything  known  to  the  ancient  world,  and 
inconceivably  dangerous  in  its  appalling  social  menace. 
Whoever  first  printed  a  page  of  type  is  responsible  for 
many  crimes  committed  in  the  name  of  literature  during 
the  past  four  centuries;  but  one  great  book  in  a  genera- 
tion or  a  century,  like  a  grain  of  radium  in  a  ton  of  pitch- 
blende, is  worth  all  it  has  cost;  for  like  the  radium  it  is 
infinitely  powerful  to  the  wise  man,  deadly  to  the  fool, 
and  its  strange,  invisible  virtue  so  far  as  we  know  may 
last  forever. 


-k        ^ 

^ 


DESIGNED  BY  BRUCE  ROGERS  AND  PRINTED 
FROM  MONOTYPE  CASLON  TYPE  BY  WILLIAM 
EDWIN  RUDGE  AT  MOUNT  VERNON  NEW  YORK 
IN  DECEMBER  1921. 
OF  THIS  EDITION  ONE  HUNDRED  COPIES  ARE 
ON  FRENCH  HAND-MADE  PAPER  AND  FIVE 
HUNDRED    ON    ANTIQUEWOVE    PAPER. 


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